Page 22 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“It’s probably time for us to head back to the cabin. I’m sure he’s exhausted.”

“We didn’t really make it very far on the tour,” Brody said.

“It doesn’t matter. This was exactly what needed to happen. Thank you.”

“Can we go riding tomorrow, Brody?” Benny asked.

He had never once asked Elizabeth if they could go riding.

“Sure, Ben,” Brody said.

Benny seemed to beam from the attention. “Sweet.”

“If you’re up to it, why don’t the two of you come to dinner tonight? My brother’s place. Gus’s wife always cooks up something great.”

“Oh,” she said, “I don’t...”

“Can we? I want to ask Gus about what it’s like to get burned in a fire.”

“Please don’t do that,” she said.

“No,” Brody said. “Ask him. I’m sure he’d like to tell you the story.”

He looked over Benny’s head and made eye contact with Elizabeth. “He’ll censor it,” he said softly.

Benny scampered back toward the truck, and Elizabeth walked slightly slower. “You know, I’m trying to teach him manners.”

“Sorry,” Brody said. “We’re not much for manners around here.”

Except that wasn’t strictly true, because everybody had been so nice to her. Even Brody.

For all that he made her feel prickly inside.

“He won’t scare him,” Brody continued. “Too much.”

She was thankful when they got into the truck that Benny had actually taken the center seat this time, and that meant she didn’t have to sit so close to Brody. As it was, the cab felt small.

When they arrived back at the cabin, Benny scrambled out of the truck and went straight into the house, and Elizabeth lingered on the porch.

“Thanks for the dinner invitation, but... I really don’t want to be a nuisance.”

“Hey, you’re new here. They say that you’re supposed to get out and meet people and stuff when you move to a new place.”

“Is that what they say?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never lived anywhere else.”

She stared at him. He seemed so much worldlier than she could ever hope to be. He was a man whose whole demeanor exuded a kind of raw sexuality that made her extremely uncomfortable. That set her on edge and made her feel like she was too close to an open flame.

But he had lived here his entire life. In this little town, on this ranch.

“You don’t know what to say to that?”

She felt her face get hot. “I don’t know why, it just threw me off a little bit. I guess because you seem...” She tried to figure out how to say it without actually saying she had thought about him and sexuality in the same sentence. “Well traveled.”

He laughed. “Is that a euphemism?” It had been. She hadn’t really meant it to be, in quite that way, but it had been.

“No. I actually don’t know how to do double entendre. It’s not in my wheelhouse.”

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